EGN NEWS DESK
Terry Robards, a former wine critic for The New York Times whose writing within the Seventies and ’80s helped Americans transfer past jug Chablis and low-cost Chianti to discover areas and kinds as far-off — and, on the time, as unique — as Burgundy and Tuscany and as shut as upstate New York, died on May 23 at his house in Upper Jay, N.Y., close to Lake Placid. He was 84.
His spouse, Julie Robards, mentioned the trigger was coronary heart failure.
The yr 1976 was an inflection level for American wine tradition. In France, two California wines beat out their French opponents in a blind tasting referred to as the Judgment of Paris. In the United States, Wine Spectator, the main journal for oenophiles, started publication.
And in New York, Mr. Robards wrote “The New York Times Book of Wine,” the primary vital ebook to cowl American wines.
Mr. Robards, who was then a monetary reporter for The Times, did in his spare time what any good wine journalist would do: He toured vineyards and cellars across the nation and in Europe, interviewing winemakers and gathering materials for frequent articles and, finally, for his first ebook.
“Terry was not solely coming to style wines but in addition to grasp the ‘why we do sure decisions in our grape rising or winemaking paths,’” Véronique Boss Drouhin, the top winemaker on the Joseph Drouhin vineyard in France, wrote in an e-mail. “He would hear rigorously to the philosophy behind the viticulture and winemaking.”
By the late Seventies the ebook was introducing hundreds of American readers to high quality wine, and Mr. Robards was thought-about one of many nation’s main wine writers, a small, principally self-taught cadre that included Robert Parker Jr., Anthony Dias Blue and Robert Lawrence Balzer.
Mr. Robards wrote articles with titles that will sound unusual in at present’s wine-fluent world, reminiscent of “The Case for Red Zinfandel” and “The Subject Is Rose,” which made the argument for rosé as an aperitif at a time when most Americans drank it as a clumsy compromise between white and purple wine.
He was later a wine critic for The New York Post and a senior editor for Wine Spectator. His different books embody “California Wine Label Album” (1981) and “Terry Robards’ New Book of Wine: The Ultimate Guide to Wines Throughout the World” (1984).
Mr. Robards additionally established himself as a service provider in 1988 with a brick-and-mortar retailer, Terry Robards Wine and Spirits, in Lake Placid. It turned a frequent vacation spot for wine fanatics.
Mr. Robards and his spouse used the shop as a classroom, holding seminars and tastings that gave perception into regional kinds, terroir, cellaring and varied winemaking secrets and techniques.
Sherman Marshall Robards was born on Oct. 7, 1939, in Manhattan and grew up in Pleasantville, in Westchester County, N.Y. His father, Sydney, was an promoting government for RCA, a job whose perks included proudly owning one of many first tv units within the space. His mom, Louise (Sherman) Robards, was an artist who additionally wrote crossword puzzles for The Times.
Mr. Robards studied literature and French at Hamilton College, in upstate New York. After graduating in 1961, he labored briefly for The Ossining News, in Westchester, earlier than becoming a member of The New York Herald Tribune as a monetary reporter in 1962.
While on trip within the Bahamas in 1965, he stumbled throughout the Beatles, who have been filming their second film. The manufacturing was so haphazard that it didn’t also have a title. An article that Mr. Robards wrote for The Herald Tribune captured the quartet’s debate over what to name it.
In the tip, what may have been “Tomorrow Never Knows” (Ringo Starr’s concept) or “Who’s Been Sleeping in My Porridge? (steered by George Harrison) or just “Beatles Two” turned “Help!”
When The Herald Tribune folded a yr later, he joined Fortune as a month-to-month columnist. But, lacking the thrill of a every day paper, Mr. Robards jumped to The Times in 1967.
He was in California on June 5, 1968, masking marketing campaign finance when Robert F. Kennedy was shot whereas campaigning for president in Los Angeles. Mr. Robards bought to the hospital simply earlier than the ambulance arrived and the authorities put the constructing on lockdown.
He and some different reporters who have been allowed to remain inside fielded calls and fed info to the surface world till Mr. Kennedy died from his wounds 25 hours later.
After receiving a contract for his wine ebook, Mr. Robards relocated from New York to London as a common task correspondent for The Times, however actually with an eye fixed on Europe’s wine areas.
“I’d work extra time to get each little bit of trip time I may and used it to go to France, Italy and Spain,” he informed The Lake Placid News in 2021. “I’d discover monetary angles about wine so I may write articles and spend extra time.”
His first three marriages led to divorce. He married Julie Robinson in 2004 in a cellar at Remoissenet Pere et Fils, a vineyard in Beaune, France.
In addition to his spouse, Mr. Robards is survived by his sons, John and Jeff; his stepson, Tim Robinson; two grandsons; and his sister, Brooks Robards.
His departure from The Times, in 1983, was not solely nice. Through his agent, he had agreed to put in writing a ebook about French wines. The ebook, nonetheless, was solely financed by a French wine firm, a undeniable fact that Mr. Robards mentioned he didn’t know on the time.
His editors declared the ebook a battle of curiosity and eliminated him because the paper’s wine critic. He left The Times a couple of months later for The Post.
Years later, in Lake Placid, Mr. Robards gained a brand new following as a wine educator, dinner host and raconteur, regaling visitors with tales about wine and winemakers, in addition to about his early days as a reporter.
He preferred to recall one explicit task throughout his time masking the auto trade for The Herald Tribune. In 1963, he traveled to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah to observe land velocity checks for the finally short-lived Studebaker Avanti.
Before the take a look at driver bought behind the wheel, Mr. Robards was allowed to drive the monitor, going quick sufficient to set the world velocity document for a common manufacturing automobile.
Less than an hour later, the take a look at driver set a brand new document. But for a short stretch of time, Mr. Robards was one of many quickest drivers on the earth.
